Carsurvey.org is a car review website published by CSDO Media Limited.Initially inspired by some of the earliest experiments inuser-generated reviews, the site now hosts almost 100,000English-language car reviews submitted by visitors from across theglobe.From 1997 to 2000, founder Steven Jackson ran the site as ahobby. However, the growing hosting costs became significant, so Stevenopted to run ads to cover them. He joined the AdSense program and wasimpressed with the initial results, which were further improved bycarefully optimising the location, colour and size of the ads. By 2005,the time demands of running a popular website while holding down a dayjob were no longer sustainable. The steady revenue from AdSense was amajor factor in Steven's decision to leave his old career and devotehimself full-time to running Carsurvey.org.AdSense offered Steven manyadvantages. Its global reach matched Carsurvey.org's diverse user base,and the fact that it separated the selling of ad space from themanagement of the site was very important to maintaining the sites'independence and credibility. Steven says, "AdSense allows me to focuson running Carsurvey.org for visitors. As long as Carsurvey.orgprovides a useful service, AdSense helps pay the bills."Ad placementsAsa regular reader of Inside AdSense, Steven was quick to pick up onimprovements to the custom channel feature, which allows advertisers totarget specific site areas using ad placements. He updated his AdSenseHTML code to highlight his site via ad placements and focused on themost important pages and locations within Carsurvey.org. This made thesite more appealing to advertisers, as they could begin to targetspecific page locations and sections. In addition, it gave moreprominence to Carsurvey.org in the AdWords site tool, as you can see inthe image below.Medium rectanglesIn addition to implementing the adplacements, Steven also tried another AdSense optimisation tip andadded more image-enabled 300x250 medium rectangle units to his site.Though initially skeptical, as using those units would mean bothchanging the page layout for all of Carsurvey.org and displaying fewerads per page, Steven decided to give the change a try.AcceleratingrevenueThe improvements were gradual at first, but soon Steven'srevenue climbed as advertisers began targeting specific ad placementson Carsurvey.org, namely the new 300x250 units in prime locations.Within a few months, Steven saw his placement targeting revenue grow upto six times its previous level; it now represents 60-80% of hisoverall earnings."I can definitely recommend experimenting with the adplacements and image enabled ads, especially in the 300x250 andskyscraper formats recommended by Google. I thought Carsurvey.org waspretty well optimised, but this just shows that experimenting withAdSense ad placements and testing out new features can really pay off,"says Steven.Posted by Colm O'Muire - AdSense UK Optimisation Team